Animal rescuers want plan for pets

Apr. 17, 2006

Jane Garrison, a volunteer with Humane Society, tries to coax out a cat from its home on Tchoupitoulas in New Orleans after the address was given to officals saying the home had some 13 cats left behind when its owner evacutated. / Douglas Collier / The Town Talk

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The Legislature reconvenes Tuesday following its Easter weekend recess.

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BATON ROUGE -- When legislative researcher Cathy Wells returned after volunteering for a month to help rescue pets forcibly separated from their owners, she told her boss, Sen. Clo Fontenot, R-Livingston, the horror stories.

Seeing-eye dogs left behind on the second floor of flooded houses. Hundreds of cats and dogs taken by well-meaning groups to adoption centers around the country, forever separating them from their owners. A blind woman whom rescuers would not allow to bring her seeing-eye dog on the evacuation bus. Thousands of pets picked up and cared for at the state's animal rescue center in Gonzales.

"The stories that really got me -- and still make me extremely mad -- were the separations of the service animals, the seeing-eye dogs," said Fontenot, whose menagerie includes "Spice," a 4-year-old white lab and two cats, "Duffle," 7, and "Shuffle," 18 months.

So Fontenot has filed a bill, Senate Bill 607, which requires all parish emergency preparedness centers to develop an evacuation plan for pets that comes complete with a tracking system so owners can feel confident they will be reunited.

Hundreds of animal lovers and rescue workers will converge on the Capitol steps at 2:30 this afternoon for a rally in support of the pet evacuation bill that comes up for a hearing at 1 p.m. Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary B Committee.

The idea behind his bill is to make emergency planners recognize how strong the human-animal bond can be, and that some owners will not abandon their pets no matter what the approaching storm may be.

Fontenot's bill has three major provisions:

Service animals, like seeing-eye dogs, must go on an evacuation bus with the owner who needs it. "These animals are well-behaved, and will not bit," Fontenot said.

Every parish should have a designated pet evacuation area where owners could take their pets in an approved animal carrier, have tags that let the owner know where the animal is to be evacuated. "The animal will be evacuated separately from the owner, but the owner will know what shelter that animal is going to go to," Fontenot said. "The owner will be able to reunite with their pet."

Anyone boarding animals for hire must have a prefiled evacuation plan that designates where those animals are going to go.

Fontenot and Wells have worked with the Humane Society, the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other natural interests in developing the legislation. Actors Mary Tyler Moore and Ed Asner and NASCAR driver Greg Biffle have written letters of support.

"This will be the first statewide pet evacuation plan in the United States," Fontenot said. Other local governments, like Dade County (Miami), Florida, have them, but no state has a pet plan, he said.

Wells, after working at the Lamar-Dixon Center in Gonzales, the state's hastily organized animal rescue center, brought home 37 cats and turned her enclosed garage into a cat haven.

Since these cats had come in with addresses, Wells kept track of them. As soon as she was able, she drove to New Orleans addresses and left notes on the doors. --I knew that eventually people would return to visit their house and would find that note," Wells said. In that way, she reunited all but three of the 37 cats with their owners.

Wells adopted "Gabby," named because she "talks" so much, found a New Orleans resident who relocated in Baton Rouge for the second and sent the third, a feral cat found on the streets of the city, to a cat sanctuary in North Carolina.

"It was the story of the blind woman who they would not let get on the evacuation bus with her seeing-eye dog. That dog was her sight," Wells said. While the woman and her dog were eventually reunited, it was not right that they were ever separated, Wells said.

Joelle Rupert of Abbeville, a force in Vermilion Animal Aid, won't be able to make the rally, as she's putting an abandoned dog in the hands of a Humane Society representative who is taking him to his new owner in New York City. But Rupert will join others at Tuesday's hearing.

In Rita's wake, Rupert and her husband, Larry, have taken care of 4,000 head of cattle, 485 horses, 325 small animals and other sheep, goats and chickens in Vermilion.

In most cases, they are caring for animals whose evacuated owners just cannot manage right now. "We are trying to keep pets and owners together. We are still trying to reunite people with their animals," she said.

They are also running a sanctuary for about 40 dogs and cats who are too old for anyone to be interested in adopting them. She told the tale of the cat, found 13 miles from the coast with a broken pelvis that her group has nursed back to health.

"For Katrina, I was helping answer the phone for the national SPCA. I spent time on the phone with people who went to hell and back. They had their animals in carrying cases and had to leave them. They will have guilt for the rest of their lives," Rupert said.

"For a lot of people, pets are not like family, they are family," Rupert said. "It is completely ridiculous that people cannot take their animals with them. Besides, animals are therapy."

"I don't think people understand how many thousands of animals were victims, too," she said.